The Star posed the following questions to this year’s O.C. recipients from the Greater Toronto Area:

1. On what occasion, either somewhere in Canada or while you were abroad, did you have the most compelling sense of what it meant to be Canadian?

2. What is your biggest hope for the country? Your biggest fear?

3. If you had one piece of advice for young Canadians, what would it be?

Their edited responses follow, with the recipients listed in alphabetical order.

Carolyn Acker was made a member of the O.C. for her contributions to increasing access to education for thousands of disadvantaged students across the country. She is the founder of Pathways to Education.

1. You know, I was on (Toronto’s) Regent St. I was in my car and there was a young woman, maybe she was about 11. She had her hijab on and great big roller blades. And she was skating down that street and her hijab was flying in the wind. I said, “That’s Canada.” And I got such a good feeling about it.

2. What I’ve learned, because of my background in community health in low-income communities, is that the lowest income kids — our aboriginal kids and immigrant kids are having the highest high school dropout rates. And those children are no different from you and me. All they need is somebody to give them an equal footing with other Canadians and that’s what we did when we developed Pathways to Education.

My biggest hope is that we will be able to create a very large movement in this country to improve educational outcomes for low-income youth and children. My hope is that we really are smart and we see that that’s the best place to make an investment in this country.

My biggest fear is that this won’t happen and that these children and youth won’t have the same life chances that other kids out of more privileged homes have.

3. Work hard and keep trying. Don’t let anybody get you down, just keep pushing forward. You have to be determined and don’t be afraid to ask for help.

Patsy Anderson was made a member of the O.C. for her social engagement and philanthropy. She is a Toronto community leader and fundraiser.

1. I lived for five years in New York and I also lived for two years in Boston and during that time I developed a strong affection for the United States and I developed a very unique bond with Canada. I have always been very very proud to be Canadian and I think you sometimes can see it more when you’re outside the country.

2. My biggest hope for the country is that it will continue to be a tolerant and very successful multicultural experiment. We are so lucky in Canada. I don’t have huge fears for the country. Throughout my adult life I have had some concerns about national unity as the intensity of that conversation comes and goes, but I am very optimistic that Canadians from coast to coast cherish our federation and realize how lucky we are.

3. My advice would be to grab on to the ethic of doing what you can to add to your own communities.

Robert G. Bertram was made an officer of the O.C. for his contributions to the financial and pension industries and his advocacy work on corporate governance. Based in Aurora, he was the executive vice-president of Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan Board (Teachers) for nearly 20 years.

1. I was travelling southern France in 1995, and I met Jacques Parizeau. This was in the lead up to the Quebec referendum in 1995. I chatted with him briefly, but it was more about running into him in France that brought the whole thing home, and how important Canada was, and what was really important was that as a civil society we could have that vote and survive.

2. For me, the biggest hope for the country, at my age, is always for the children. We have an educated, ambitious and caring next generation, and I think they’ll make the right choices.

My fear is that Canada becomes an inverted and parochial society, where we start looking at our own problems instead of considering the problems of others.

3. I would say the most enlightening thing is travel abroad, and then you get a great education about how really good it is to be Canadian and what you have at home.

Rabbi Arthur N. Bielfeld, made a member of the O.C. for his contributions to Toronto’s Jewish community over more than 30 years and his activities supporting social justice. A native of Worcester, Mass., he immigrated to Canada in 1968 to become rabbi at Toronto’s Temple Emanu-El.

1. The epiphany came at the ceremony where I was sworn in as a Canadian citizen. . . I’d come to love this country and I wish more Canadians had that sense of the genius of this country and what it offers. I live for five months of the year on an island in Georgian Bay. This is an exquisite and unique country. There is a preciousness in what I’ve now come to share as my own.

2. What I have come to cherish most is the breadth not only of the land, but of the diversity of Canada’s people. It is, in the best possible sense, a multicultural society. I know there are people who today have become rather unhappy with the ideal of multiculturalism. I benefited from the laws and the attitudes that encouraged immigration. What Canada has going for it is potentially a breadth of perspectives that makes it an interesting and dynamic place. My greatest hope is that we will retain that outlook and not return to some more narrowly focused perspective, where either through law or through attitude we discourage that true multicultural spirit.

3. I recently spoke to a group of middle schoolers, their parents and their teachers. I asked them, “Who are your Canadian heroes?” I was somewhat taken aback that they had some difficult in responding, after they went through the usual roster of Wayne Gretzky and somebody mentioned Justin Bieber. If I must give advice to a younger generation, it would be: know the greatness of your history, of the people who have made and continue to make this such a fabulous country.

Ian Binnie was made a companion of the O.C. for his contributions in the legal profession and his commitment to legal education and the rule of law. He served for more than a decade as justice of the Supreme Court of Canada. He was also Canada’s associate deputy minister of justice.

1. In 1970-71 I was working in Dar es Salaam in East Africa, and it was possible to get the CBC International from Sackville, New Brunswick if I held the radio aerial with one had and the window frame with the other hand. When the sounds of “O Canada” came crackling over the airwaves, it was really quite emotional. Now, it would be like talking to somebody next door, but then you really did have a sense of being half a world away, and I had seen the towers at Sackville, and it was really emotional to hear the national anthem from that distance.

2. I think what, to me, has always characterized Canada is a very fundamental sense of decency and people caring for people. And traditionally we’ve all been prepared to pay higher taxes so that people don’t get seriously left behind in poverty or lack of education, so my greatest hope is that this national spirit that has always seemed to bind us together continues. My greatest fear is that it will disintegrate into a free-for-all where everybody only looks out for themselves.

3. Realize that you are the captain of your own ship and that what you do in life is your responsibility, and that when you get beyond school, you no longer have somebody watching over your shoulder, giving you guidance, and if you wind up in 40 years not having achieved what you hoped, you’re going to have to look within yourself to see if you lost track of the dreams you started out with.

Natalie Zemon Davis was made a companion of the O.C. for her contributions in the field of history. She is a social and cultural historian at the University of Toronto specializing in modern Europe and 16th-17th- century France.

1. It meant a great deal for me to become a Canadian. I’ve lived here for many years — my husband and I immigrated here (from the U.S.) in 1962, and I’ve always had a home here — but I became a citizen in 2007, and one of the things I particularly liked was that there were 72 of us and I think we came from 36 countries, I loved that. And I loved the fact that I was sworn in by a judge who was a francophone, because when I first moved here, one of the things that was most meaningful to me was that it was a bilingual country.

2. My biggest cultural hope would be that we could bring the distinctive mix we have of historical memories and languages to bear on understanding the human condition and the arts, so as to make a distinctive contribution to understanding the historical past and the ways in which different peoples can live together, and live with nature, in a peaceful future. I would hope that the women of Canada would play an important part in that dialogue.

My greatest fear would be if the country were to fragment itself, and fall back into separatism and turn its back on the world and its problems, rather than the richness of its difference leading to communication and co-operation.

3. Bring hope and imagination to your future. In shaping your future, think both about what you love to do and are good at doing, and also think about how you can be helpful to others.

Elizabeth Dowdeswell was made a companion of the O.C. for her contributions to public and environmental policy. A native of Ireland, she was the executive director of the United Nations Environment Program from 1993 to 1998 and is currently president and CEO of the Council of Canadian Academies.

1. I have had the wonderful opportunity to work internationally at the United Nations Environment Program, and in that job I visited well over 100 countries. It was wonderful because you had a chance to see the problems and the responses that various countries dealt with. But what was really important is that I got to see my own country through a different lens. It made me realize just how incredibly fortunate we are as a country, the richest in every sense of the word, whether it’s resources, whether it’s the way in which we deal with one another as citizens, and it made me all the more determined to convey just the need for seeing the rest of the world, the need for seeing how fortunate we are back home. Often Canada is the bridge builder, the connector between countries large and small, and it just fills you with a great deal of pride when you can see that you can make a difference.

2. My greatest hope is, from a public service perspective, that we will continue to try and improve the quality of life, not only for Canadians but also for people internationally. We are a very interconnected part of the world, and I hope that we won’t close our doors, and that we will continue to work with others. I hope that our characteristic of generosity will continue.

My fear is that we will become fragmented, that we won’t see things holistically, that we will continue to pay less and less attention to our political system. One of the things that we’re known for and that I value deeply is democracy. When Canadian citizens don’t bother to vote, don’t bother to become engaged, and we don’t motivate them to do that, that’s what I fear most for our country.

3. Take a look at the world around you. Visit the rest of Canada, go up to the High Arctic, go to Quebec if you’re from New Brunswick, go to Saskatchewan if you’re from British Columbia, learn about your neighbours in Canada, and take a look at the rest of the world and I think you’ll genuinely be surprised about what you can learn from them, but also I think you’ll come to really appreciate what it is that we have here in this country.

Allan Gotlib, made a member of the O.C. for his contributions to advancing research in the chiropractic profession and its interprofessional integration. He is a chiropractor in Thornhill.

1. While listening to a national newscast one evening and hearing about an outrageous atrocity to a 15-year-old adolescent who was hanged in another country halfway around the world, I gave heartfelt thanks to Canada. Canada gives its citizens one of the world’s most precious gifts, freedom.

2. My hope is that Canada will be an exemplary leader in both human rights issues and environmental issues.

3. Don’t let someone tell you it can’t be done. Dream to succeed — then work hard!

Dr. Prabhat Jha was made an officer of the O.C. for his contributions to the epidemiology and economics of global health. Born in India, the epidemiologist is the University of Toronto Canada Research Chair in the department of public health sciences.

1. I was in Europe when I was a student around 1989, the Berlin Wall had just fallen, and I saw students walking around with a Canadian flag on their backpacks. I thought they were fellow Canadians, but they were actually two American guys. They’d put them on so that they’d get treated better. I think it suggests that we have an important place in the world — though I’m not sure that we’ve lived up to our expectations in the last 10 to 15 years — and we as Canadians have enjoyed an enormous advantage living here.

2. My hope is to export more of the things that are Canadian. You’ve got enormous debate and controversy about what to do with the U.S. health-care system, and it’s kind of bloody obvious: be Canadian. Move to a universal health care system. And if you think about China, India, South Africa, Brazil, what some of their big challenges for the future are, what they need to do, health is one of the big topics, and one of the most important lessons is that they should try and get universal health coverage like we have in Canada. We pay for it in Canada, but it’s worth pretty much every penny. We’ve got to be exporting our ideas about how to organize and fund and research health care.

My biggest fear is if politics stops believing in science. It’s never the case that scientists like me get everything we want, because there’s always a political process, but if science isn’t viewed as an equal pillar, and decisions are only based on short term, 24-hour news cycle politics, then we’ll lose something as a country.

3. Believe in what you do. Doesn’t matter if you’re doing things others think are stupid or wasteful, just believe in what you do.

Frances Lankin was made a member of the O.C. for her contibutions to social justice as a politician and a social service administrator. She is a former president and CEO of United Way Toronto and a former Ontario MPP and cabinet minister.

1. You know what? I haven’t had one. It’s not one epiphany. Sure, there have been times when you’re travelling, and you see something, usually something for me that’s distressing, and I think, “Oh, thank God I live in Canada!” When I think about my pride in being a Canadian, or why I think this country is so great, it’s been cumulative over the years. It’s because it’s a country of shared values, of commitment to democracy and equality. The fact we have a Charter of Rights and Freedoms and we celebrate that. It’s a country where we celebrate our peaceful diversity. We like the fact that there are lots of us from different places in the world. There may be minor irritations. Nothing’s perfect about this. But, basically, we celebrate that, and we like that about each other. We’re not perfect. But we strive to make things better all the time. And if we think something of core value to our country is threatened we band together to protect it. There’s an engagement, an underlying set of shared values. And I love that.

2. I think that there is a threat to that social cohesion that stems largely from the growing inequality in our country. This is a function of a lot of different things, but it can be tremendously mitigated by conscientious public-policy intervention. We’ve started to retract the public-policy interventions in some of these areas to our overall detriment. It’s about the level of inequality, how we live with each other and share this country with each other. It’s going in the wrong direction and I don’t see a place where there’s the coming together of a dialogue about this issue.

3. It’s that people need to have a passion in their life. They need to find something that they really care about and, in the array of the things that you do every day, make sure there’s a place where your passion for making things better gets a chance to be played out. You’re never doing it alone. You’re always doing it with others. You’re always dependent on connecting with others to make that happen. Everything you do to give towards making things better for others in our community plays right back into our own lives, enriching our own lives. So, there’s a virtuous circle there. Live for the passion. And enjoy the virtuous circle.

William “Grit” Laskin, made a member of the O.C. for his contributions as a musician and internationally recognized instrument builder and his promotion of folk music in Canada. He is a Toronto guitar-maker, songwriter, musician and author.

1. When I travel the country with the Canadian Folk Music Awards to different cities every year, and we see the participation of so many artists, I’m proud of what Canada’s doing. The scene here is so huge, but it’s below the radar. In the early ’60s, there were three major folk festivals in all of North America — Mariposa, Newport and Monterrey. Now, in Ontario alone, there are 30 every summer. In the country as a whole, there are more than 200 folk festivals every year. I’m so proud of it as a Canadian thing.

2. Oh, gee. I guess I should stay away from politics. Because that’s where my hopes and fears lie. I was a friend of Jack (Layton). We live in Riverdale, I’d known him for decades, worked on his campaigns. Also, I was his guitar consultant. And even during the last campaign we were emailing back and forth.

3. Look less at a screen and more at the world. Stop thinking you have to document everything that happens in your life, instead of just experiencing the moment without being a distanced observer of it.

Hadi-Khan Mahabadi was made an officer of the O.C. for his innovations in the field of polymer science and commitment to promoting science in Canada. A native of Iran, he was vice-president of the Xerox Research Centre of Canada in Mississauga.

1. I came to Canada to study and before I came I had the opportunity to go to other countries to study. I guess what impressed me more than anything else was the social condition and also the political stance of Canada in the world. I mean the respect that Canada has at the international level was a very important factor. After I stayed here for some time to complete my postgraduate degree I realized that Canadians are really nice people.

2. Canada has a lot of advantages and a lot of opportunity. We have a lot of opportunities on economic and social development, but we could do much better if we added to our knowledge-based economy and were a country that produces more goods and services using innovation, using the creative minds of all of the educated people in Canada to create wealth, to create well-being.

My fear is that we have a lot of opportunities in front of us and we don’t recognize it because of complacence. My fear is that the next generation or generations beyond it are not going to have as good a life as we have.

3. Young people should recognize that they have to pay attention to science and math because this is going to be our future. Getting an education in general and focusing on science and math is very important for the future of Canada.

Ermanno Mauro was made an office of the O.C. for his accomplishments as a tenor of international stature and for sharing his wisdom with a new generation of opera singers. The tenor lives in Mississauga.

1. I don’t have to go very far. I emigrated to Canada in 1958. When the five years were over I became a Canadian citizen and I’ve been a very proud Canadian. Everywhere I say that I am a Canadian. Everywhere I go all over the world, I am a Canadian.

2. I think we have to decide who is to govern the country. There are too many people with their foot, or their hand, or their pinky or whatever in it. So nobody knows who is who. Canada is not the only country (with this problem). I remember that when I came to Canada in ’58 when you saw policemen there was actual respect. Now there is no respect. I’m talking about the young people. When I was young, my father used to say that sometimes when you have too much freedom people don’t know what to do with it.

The biggest fear is that it’s going to become that everybody’s going to do whatever they want.

3. Work hard. Work hard. Because I see people go university, they come out and they think they know it all already. My motto is you buy a house, that’s the easiest thing to do. It’s to keep the house. To get married, you go there, they marry you, they give you a piece of paper, but to stay married what do you do? You’ve got to work at it. That’s my principle.

Marianne McKenna was made an officer of the O.C. for her contributions as an architect, designing structures that enrich the public realm. She is a partner with Kuwabara Payne McKenna Blumberg Architects.

1. Based on travel to multiple locations, one really does feel it when you’re home. And it is that quiet stability — accepting behaviour. Not immediately a reaction to some of the things that are going on, a kind of a thoughtful response that comes from Canadians. Even though there are challenges I think there is a determination to address the challenges that exist in our country currently. Because you travel a lot outside of Canada, you actually feel it the most when you’re in Canada.

2. I guess my biggest hope is for addressing the 1 per cent — for a better distribution of the attitudes of the wealthy. That everyone in every part of the very broad ranging socioeconomic makeup of this country feels a sense of opportunity, whatever you are doing. So it’s really empowering the social intelligence at every level and I think that comes from education, a sense of community that’s offered to all in Canada, which has become unique to us in North America.

My fear would be polarization of politics which one sees beginning to happen. I’m from Quebec originally so you see Quebec as a separate entity. The beauty of Canada is that every province and every ethnic group represents an entity of Canada, but that we don’t see ourselves as polarized into opinions, that there is that sharing and broader community and generosity of spirit.

3. To aspire. To aspire for themselves within the broader Canadian context. To see themselves as productive entities. I have children at that age and I see their friends struggling to get jobs and thinking that it’s hopeless. Well it’s not hopeless. You have to aspire and you have to just keep on plugging. Don’t read the statistics, engage in the world in which we live and you will find something. Education is really critical, not just a college degree so much, but learning how to think within what the Canadian universities offer you. There’s the thought process, the political awareness, social intelligence all of these things are very important for young people to contemplate and for them to reach out. Don’t hold back. I think you do need to reach out.

The questions:

1. On what occasion, either somewhere in Canada or while you were abroad, did you have the most compelling sense of what it meant to be Canadian?

2. What is your biggest hope for the country? Your biggest fear?

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